CIA: China waging quiet kind of cold war

ASPEN (AP) — China is waging a “quiet kind of cold war” against the United States, using all its resources to try to replace the latter as the leading power in the world, a top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) expert on Asia said on Friday.

Beijing does not want to go to war, he said, but the current communist government under President Xi Jinping is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the US in ways that are different from the more well-publicized activities being employed by Russia.

“I would argue...that what they’re waging against us is fundamentally a cold war — a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the US and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition,” CIA’s East Asia mission center deputy assistant director Michael Collins said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Rising US-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a tariff tit-for-tat between the two nations.

There is concern over China’s pervasive efforts to steal business secrets and details about high-tech research being conducted in the US. The Chinese military is expanding and being modernized and the US as well as other nations have complained about China’s construction of military outposts on islands in the South China Sea.

“I would argue that it’s the Crimea of the East,” Collins said, referring to Russia’s brash annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which was condemned throughout the West.

Collins’ comments track warnings about China’s rising influence issued by others who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarm bells come at a time when Washington needs China’s help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.

Last Wednesday, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray said China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest and most significant threat America faces.

He added that the FBI has economic espionage investigations in all 50 states that can be traced back to China.

“The volume of it. The pervasiveness of it. The significance of it is something that I think this country cannot underestimate,” Wray said.

National Intelligence director Dan Coats also warned of rising Chinese aggression. In particular, he said, the US must stand strong against China’s effort to steal business secrets and academic research.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton said increasing the public’s awareness about the activities of hundreds of thousands of Chinese students or groups at US universities could be one way to help mitigate potential damage.

“China is not just a footnote to what we’re dealing with with Russia,” she said.

Former undersecretary of defense for intelligence Marcel Lettre said China has the second-largest defense budget in the world, the largest standing army of ground forces, the third largest air force and a navy of 300 ships and more than 60 submarines.

“All of this is in the process of being modernized and upgraded,” Lettre, who sat on a panel with Collins and Thornton, said.

China, according to Lettre, is also pursuing advances in cyber, artificial intelligence, engineering and technology, counter-space, anti-satellite capabilities and hypersonic glide weapons.